Jessica stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I know what you think of Chani," Harah said. "You think she is not the wife for your son."
Jessica settled back, relaxed on her cushions. She shrugged. "Perhaps."
"You could be right," Harah said. "If you are, you may find a surprising ally -- Chani herself. She wants whatever is best for Him."
Jessica swallowed past a sudden tightening in her throat. "Chani's very dear to me," she said. "She could be no --"
"Your rugs are very dirty in here," Harah said. She swept her gaze around the floor, avoiding Jessica's eyes. "So many people tramping through here all the time. You really should have them cleaned more often."
= = = = = =
You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.
-from "Muad'Dib: The Religious Issues" by the Princess Irulan Paul waited on the sand outside the gigantic maker's line of approach. I must not wait like a smuggler -- impatient and jittering, he reminded himself. I must be part of the desert.
The thing was only minutes away now, filling the morning with the friction-hissing of its passage. Its great teeth within the cavern-circle of its mouth spread like some enormous flower. The spice odor from it dominated the air.
Paul's stillsuit rode easily on his body and he was only distantly aware of his nose plugs, the breathing mask. Stilgar's teaching, the painstaking hours on the sand, overshadowed all else.
"How far outside the maker's radius must you stand in pea sand?" Stilgar had asked him.
And he had answered correctly: "Half a meter for every meter of the maker's diameter."
"Why?"
"To avoid the vortex of its passage and still have time to run in and mount it."
"You've ridden the little ones bred for the seed and the Water of Life,"
Stilgar had said. "But what you'll summon for your test is a wild maker, an old man of the desert. You must have proper respect for such a one."
Now the thumper's deep drumming blended with the hiss of the approaching worm. Paul breathed deeply, smelling mineral bitterness of sand even through his filters. The wild maker, the old man of the desert, loomed, almost on him. Its cresting front segments threw a sandwave that would sweep across his knees.
Come up, you lovely monster, he thought. Up. You hear me calling. Come up.
Come up.
The wave lifted his feet. Surface dust swept across him. He steadied himself, his world dominated by the passage of that sand-clouded curving wall, that segmented cliff, the ring lines sharply defined in it.
Paul lifted his hooks, sighted along them, leaned in. He felt them bite and pull. He leaped upward, planting his feet against that wall, leaning out against the clinging barbs. This was the true instant of the testing: if he had planted the hooks correctly at the leading edge of a ring segment, opening the segment, the worm would not roll down and crush him.
The worm slowed. It glided across the thumper, silencing it. Slowly, it began to roll -- up, up -- bringing those irritant barbs as high as possible, away from the sand that threatened the soft inner lapping of its ring segment.
Paul found himself riding upright atop the worm. He felt exultant, like an emperor surveying his world. He suppressed a sudden urge to cavort there, to turn the worm, to show off his mastery of this creature.
Suddenly he understood why Stilgar had warned him once about brash young men who danced and played with these monsters, doing handstands on their backs, removing both hooks and replanting them before the worm could spill them.
Leaving one hook in place, Paul released the other and planted it lower down the side. When the second hook was firm and tested, he brought down the first one, thus worked his way down the side. The maker rolled, and as it rolled, it turned, coming around the sweep of flour sand where the others waited.
Paul saw them come up, using their hooks to climb, but avoiding the sensitive ring edges until they were on top. They rode at last in a triple line behind him, steadied against their hooks.
Stilgar moved up through the ranks, checked the positioning of Paul's hooks, glanced up at Paul's smiling face.
"You did it, eh?" Stilgar asked, raising his voice above the hiss of their passage. "That's what you think? You did it?" He straightened. "Now I tell you that was a very sloppy job. We have twelve-year-olds who do better. There was drumsand to your left where you waited. You could not retreat there if the worm turned that way."
The smile slipped from Paul's face. "I saw the drumsand."
"Then why did you not signal for one of us to take up position secondary to you? It was a thing you could do even in the test."
Paul swallowed, faced into the wind of their passage.
"You think it bad of me to say this now," Stilgar said. "It is my duty. I think of your worth to the troop. If you had stumbled into that drumsand, the maker would've turned toward you."
In spite of a surge of anger, Paul knew that Stilgar spoke the truth. It took a long minute and the full effort of the training he had received from his mother for Paul to recapture a feeling of calm. "I apologize," he said. "It will not happen again."
"In a tight position, always leave yourself a secondary, someone to take the maker if you cannot," Stilgar said. "Remember that we work together. That way, we're certain. We work together, eh?"
He slapped Paul's shoulder.
"We work together," Paul agreed.
"Now," Stilgar said, and his voice was harsh, "show me you know how to handle a maker. Which side are we on?"
Paul glanced down at the scaled ring surface on which they stood, noted the character and size of the scales, the way they grew larger off to his right, smaller to his left. Every worm, he knew, moved characteristically with one side up more frequently. As it grew older, the characteristic up-side became an almost constant thing. Bottom scales grew larger, heavier, smoother. Top scales could be told by size alone on a big worm.
Shifting his hooks, Paul moved to the left. He motioned flankers down to open segments along the side and keep the worm on a straight course as it rolled. When he had it turned, he motioned two steersmen out of the line and into positions ahead.
